There has to be more to this XP/Keyboard thing than meets the eye. I run XP
and CW Type to generate Morse. Attached to my LPT is a simple adapter that
isolates the port via optical coupling from Hose Nose. I can run this up to
any speed, 100 wpm, and it keys beautifully and evenly with no hesitation no
matter what programs I'm running including N4PY.
The only justification I can find for installing WinKey is so N4PY's
software will work with a keyboard. So what's the deal? Do other
Pegasus/Jupiter control programs have the same problem with cw keyboards?
Why does CW TYPE work so well and for that matter, other logging and contest
softwares too? Can we still blame the OS?

I've never seen any lag here either, even with 4 N4PY
sessions running simultaneously controlling 6 Pegasus
radios, - 4 of which are sweeping (sweeping is more
CPU and serial port traffic intensive). I'm running
all of this under Windows 2000 on an AMD Athlon
XP2600/512MB with 3 video displays. The CPU usage
typically hovers in the 40-60% region. The CPU spikes
up some while tuning fast but all of the other radios
continue to sweep uniformly and steady. My older
750Mhz machine would occasionally lag a bit with this
same basic software setup, to fix it I simply
bought/built a better computer. The last thing I
wanted to do was compromise my multi radio system's
performance by using an under powered PC.

As for the CW keying in XP it is because the NT/W2K/XP
OS's are all preemptive multitasking, which is a good
thing. The down side is that programs like CW sending
routines can be interrupted by the OS handing the
processor off to another app while it is in the middle
of sending a code element, the Win9x OS's won't do
that, but then they are *far* more prone to crash the
*entire* PC if an app freezes or misbehaves otherwise.
Also I don't believe that multiple instances of Carl's
program would perform very uniformly on Win9x either.

I applaud Carl for integrating the K1EL keyer, and I
see that many of the other ham software writers are
also doing likewise, - bravo to all of them. The LPT
and RS232 ports were never meant to be used as a
semi-precision on/off switch that the computer
generated CW programs try to make them into.

Duane
N9DG

--- Steve N4LQ <n4lq@iglou.com> wrote:

Interesting contrast. My readout follows the mouse
instantly but the cw
keyboard keying is horrible. N4PY says it's an XP
issue. I wonder if Win98
would work better overall? If so, I could press my
old laptop into service just for this job.

> Hi Ron,
>
> Unless you are using an Orion what you want is the
Pegasus software from
> N4PY. I use it and it works fine with one
exception. Because of a port
> speed issue tuning the radio lags the screen
display on the computer.
> However, if yu are into cw, the keyboard keying is
great and also the
> ability to scan a range of frequencies.
>
> 73,
>
> Vince Santis, N1VS
> Winsted, CT 06098

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